11.8. Conclusion
Flex Room: Literary Techniques in Ancient Biographies
Although ancient biographies influenced their modern namesakes,1 they also differed from them. Although, as we have shown, biographers normally ideally did their best to use significant historical information and thus differed from novelists, they addressed audiences with expectations very different from those of most readers of modern biographies. The conventions of ancient biography permitted considerable freedom in how biographers recounted their information. Some Evangelists and some biographers exploited this literary flexibility more than did others.
Understanding the range of flexibility various ancient biographers exercised helps us understand better both the information content that ancient audiences would expect in the Gospels and the rhetorical and literary flexibility they would expect the gospel traditions and Evangelists to exercise.
Here I survey some ancient literary techniques evident in biographers’ works, techniques that bear on the expectations with which we should approach the Gospels. I engage especially Michael R. Licona’s valuable work that has recently applied to the Gospels literary techniques culled from Plutarch’s works.2 These techniques extend well beyond Plutarch to many other ancient biographers.
11.1. Flexibility in Ancient Biography
Both historians and biographers varied among themselves in historiographic quality, and even the most careful writers were expected to tell a good story.3 The essential historical substance should remain, but the reason that writers composed new works, after all, was to provide their own literary interpretation or construction of events. Thus one expert on Arrian points out that this author “does not seem to have altered the data of his sources, but the original order and emphasis are altered. . . . He may be dependent on his sources for material, but he rises above them and creates a literary work that is wholly his own.”4
What sort of freedoms did writers in factual genres take? Paraphrase was a conventional rhetorical exercise,5 but flexibility extended much further than the use of paraphrase. Some historians were careless about details; most did not care about minor variations.6 Thus, for example, two ancient historians report that a son died, and another reports the death as that of a daughter; many historians would have deemed such differences as minutiae irrelevant to their point.7 Likewise, in his separate works, Josephus has Antipas banished to different distant locations.8 More than likely, simple lapse of memory (sometimes based on how sources were envisioned) is often responsible for the variation, and the matters seemed too minor to warrant revision or concern.9
At other times, authors alter or add explanatory details to events.10 Given the importance of vividness for rhetorical style,11 it is not surprising that some writers add details for dramatic effect.12 After all, given the limitations of human memory (see ch. 14), they would not expect all details in their sources to be authentic in any case. Orally oriented cultures are less troubled by variations than are some modern Western critics.13 (Still, it should be noted that the Gospels do not offer the sort of extensive detail found in more rhetorically sophisticated works.)14
Still, some authors complained when some of their peers went too far. Plutarch complains that some earlier writers added incidents missing elsewhere, for example, composing a proper tragic finale for Alexander’s life.15 Lucian objects to historical writers amplifying and omitting merely for literary or encomiastic purposes (i.e., to make the character look better).16 Other writers voiced similar criticisms.17
How much flexibility was accepted in ancient biographies? That depended on individual biographers and on the sources available to them; variation was ordinarily much greater about figures of the distant past, for whom existing competing traditions were more often available. By contrast, comparison of biographies of a figure such as Otho, composed half a century after the events described, reveals substantial overlap of information, similar to what we witness in a synopsis of the Gospels (see ch. 10).
11.2. Flexibility in the Gospels
Simply because some biographers adapted their sources in particular ways does not mean that all biographers did so in the same ways. Nevertheless, that ancient biographers could exercise at least some flexibility will not surprise any attentive reader of the Gospels who has taken time to compare parallel accounts. To repeat some particularly conspicuous but simple examples, did Jesus speak regularly of the kingdom of God, as in Mark and Luke, or of the kingdom of heaven, as usually in Matthew? Did the centurion cry out, “Truly, this was God’s son!” (Mark 15:39), or (what Mark’s version would necessarily entail), “Certainly, this man was righteous/innocent!” (Luke 23:47)?
Although some modern readers find these differences in wording troubling, such differences rarely bothered ancient audiences. Whether one agrees with Papias or not, his early second-century report about Mark’s Gospel lets us know what he believed about it:
Mark, having become Peter’s interpreter, wrote down accurately everything he [Mark] remembered, though not in order, of the things either said or done by Christ. For he [Mark] neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but afterward, as I said, followed Peter, who adapted his teachings as needed18 but had no intention of giving an ordered account of the Lord’s sayings. Consequently Mark did nothing wrong in writing down some things as he remembered them, for he made it his one concern not to omit anything that he heard or to make any false statement in them.19
Papias apparently deemed neither sequence nor precise wording essential. Indeed, Papias seems to expect that Peter himself adapted Jesus’s teachings, perhaps meaning that Peter contextualized the message homiletically or at least chose what to emphasize based on the needs of his hearers. Such flexibility appears so frequently in ancient factual accounts, including biographies, that it seems inherent in them and expected by audiences.
11.3. Acceptable Differences: Philo, Josephus, Plutarch
It is sometimes blatantly obvious that biographers did not mind variation in details. A biographer can vary in such details even in his own works that cover the same events or can diverge from widely known sources. Sometimes such differences appear even in lives that a single biographer wrote at roughly the same time.20 Sometimes this incongruity might reflect a difference in preferred source material,21 but usually it probably simply reflects how the writer adapts his material for a particular life.22
Philo’s Life of Moses, which we can compare with his OT source, follows the same techniques observed below in Plutarch and the Gospels. Philo omits some OT episodes23 and OT rhetorical repetitions;24 he often abridges,25 sometimes by conflating material.26
Nevertheless, although he cuts sections, “when he does follow the story he is more likely to elaborate than to abridge.”27 Like most commentators today, Philo usually expands narratives with explanatory detail; like storytellers, he also adds dramatic detail.28 Occasionally, he must do so to justify Moses,29 but usually his expansions do not change “the essence of the” biblical picture.30 Sometimes he displaces material chronologically;31 he even rearranges the plagues to fit his contextualized explanation.32 Philo sometimes downplays other characters in order to spotlight Moses more clearly,33 a common biographic technique noted further below.
Yet he often follows the biblical text closely.34 Some features identified in Plutarch are less frequent here; thus, for example, Philo only rarely transfers a matter to a different character.35
11.3b. Adjustments in Josephus
The first-century Jewish historian Josephus exercises considerable flexibility, yet he claims to add nothing to his account.36 As Gerald Downing notes, comparing Josephus with his source suggests what Josephus can take for granted that his audience may expect: “what ‘counts as’ an accurate reproduction of a sacred text, what interpretation is so clearly legitimate as to need no defense, but also what limits are that he seems to feel bound to observe.”37
Downing shows how Josephus uses his biblical sources.38 Rather than following his sources’ sequence, he rearranges material for coherence or narrative flow.39 He selectively omits source material that repeats itself or conflicts with other passages; not to do so would make his narrative less cohesive and would make it harder to make his apologetic case for his wider audience.40 Likewise, he adds some material for narrative flow, to clarify and to make moral, theological, or apologetic points.41 His changes add “new colour,”42 though most changes simply seem to function as avoidance of cribbing the biblical text verbatim.43 Apart from speeches, however, Josephus does not invent new incidents;44 even when he adapts material most freely rather than paraphrasing, he produces a “version” of his source accounts rather than a completely new story.45 Josephus rearranges, paraphrases, conflates, and harmonizes his material, but he follows his sources rather than making up new stories; like other elite historians, he is freer in reworking speech and dialogue for dramatic, narrative purposes.46 More recent work by Robert Derrenbacker confirms and develops further Downing’s observations.47
John Jordan Henderson compares Josephus’s apologetic autobiography with parallel (and sometimes contrasting) information in Josephus’s historiographic corpus. In this case, the differences belong to the same author writing in two genres, suggesting some flexibility (or sometimes carelessness or tendentiousness) in how Josephus tells the same story. For various reasons, Josephus takes significant latitude,48 producing some demonstrable contradictions between the works in matters of detail and even tension between the portrayals of the character of Josephus’s Galilean mission.49 That Josephus does not feel a need to qualify or defend such differences may suggest that he expects his Diaspora audience to appreciate a measure of flexibility in the biographic genre, certainly more than readers of modern biographies anticipate.
To a significant extent, the differences between the verdicts regarding Josephus are matters of emphasis, depending on the foil to which we compare them. Josephus’s practice is certainly more flexible than modern historiography, but neither is it comparable to ancient novels. Josephus rewrites details rather than inventing incidents (at least normally). He is naturally more bound to a well-known and prior text in his Antiquities than in his autobiography, with differences also relating to the difference between writing sacred history and writing an autobiography that defends his own honor. The Gospels are biographies with undoubtedly apologetic elements, yet they also recount a sacred story, one that by Luke’s day, at least, was already to some degree known (Luke 1:4).
11.3c. Adjustments in Plutarch
Nearly all writers adjusted their sources rather than reproduced them wholesale. Even writers who follow their sources closely redact them, even in the case of sacred cultural texts.50 Many differences were admittedly quite minor, such as one account “reporting minor information not included in the other”51 or a slight variation in wording.52
Scholars have especially studied how Plutarch adapts his sources. Plutarch’s flexibility was limited: “While Plutarch felt free to invent an occasional scene, he did not invent entire episodes”; he did not perpetrate “deliberate falsehood.”53 Yet Plutarch follows various literary techniques for fleshing out or simplifying his narrations. Analogous to how Josephus conflates his sources, such as Samuel-Kings and the Chronicler, Plutarch conflates Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Livy.54
Consistent with the probability that his sources have done so before him, he emphasizes or adjusts features of a story to depict a biographee as “more or less favorable” or “to create irony.” Plutarch believes that he is communicating something true about the figure’s character.55
Plutarch can mention any reports of events so long as they precede his time. He is willing to include prior but debatable material if it illustrates moral truth “about his subject.”56 He is ready to consider a story if it is “famous,” “well-attested, and, what is more to the point, . . . it comports so well with the character” of the figure known from other sources.57
Although in different genres, preachers and some of us professors will sometimes speak similarly, using even an explicitly fictitious or legendary illustration to reinforce a point. (For example, I sometimes will cite, albeit explicitly as probably apocryphal, Augustus’s alleged remark about Herod: “Better to be Herod’s pig than his son.”)58
Building on recent research in classics, especially insights from Oxford’s Christopher Pelling, Michael Licona highlights a number of common literary techniques in Plutarch’s biographies. He recognizes that various other factors account for some differences, such as “a slip of memory, the use of different sources, the elasticity of oral tradition.”59 But he also notes that some adaptations follow literary conventions already articulated in basic first-century textbooks.60 One could, for example, convert a statement into a question, a command, or dialogue,61 perhaps accounting for such differences in the Gospels as Matthew 8:7//Luke 7:6a.62
Some compositional techniques appear throughout ancient historiography, despite diverse designations assigned to them.63 The devices that Licona lists include the following, although some of these (such as simplification) may encompass others or are closely related to one another:64
Licona illustrates these devices by comparing thirty parallel pericopes within nine of Plutarch’s lives.67
Many of the techniques observable in Plutarch also appear in other, earlier writers, for example, in how different biographers about Agesilaus edit their material.68 Various writers offer the same forms of adaptation in biographic material about Galba and Otho.69 Attentive listeners today will likely find themselves or others employing some of these same devices when we narrate events; without some simplification, narrations become impossible to follow in ordinary conversation.
In addition to these techniques, biographers also often use rhetorical synkrisis, paralleling characters in such a way as to invite readers to compare them.70 For example, one could highlight a biographee’s virtue by contrasting the vices of his detractors.71 Similarly, although Plutarch’s closing synkrisis sometimes contradicts the biographies themselves, offering a different angle from which to consider moral lessons, it often emphasizes the differences between figures analogous to how his prologues had highlighted their similarities.72 Suetonius contrasts Vespasian with the profligate Nero73 and may use Augustus as a standard for subsequent emperors.74
11.4. Surveying Some Literary Techniques
As already noted, paraphrase was a standard practice in rhetoric and composition,75 and it was therefore also standard in adapting prior material in biographies and histories.76 In fact, literary works normally paraphrase much more freely than do Matthew or Luke; their verbal similarities to Mark are extraordinary by ancient standards.77 To take over material without paraphrasing it could function as a deliberate allusion, but otherwise it was ordinarily considered simply literarily inept. Phaedrus feels free to adapt Aesop for aesthetic reasons, meanwhile seeking to keep to the spirit of Aesop.78 One might also present events from a different rhetorical angle to stir emotion.79
Compression streamlines narratives, maintaining focus on the main character;80 sometimes it simply eliminates or reduces the span of time between events, but sometimes it also requires conflating them.81 For example, Plutarch condenses what are three sessions in one of his works into a single session in another.82 Other authors similarly vary their elaboration of time spans concerning the same events within their own works, depending on factors such as the space allotted: in one account a death or ascension may appear immediate, and in another, after a number of days.83
Conflation was a common way to simplify material, both in shorter quotations from memory84 and in following larger blocks of material.85 Some instances of such blending may stem from memory lapses,86 but conflation appears even in different accounts by the same author.87 Josephus conflates related events in biblical history when narrating them together simplifies his narrative, avoiding needless repetition;88 he also does so to harmonize varying material when possible.89 Some earlier Jewish90 and subsequent Christian91 scribal sources might provide examples of microconflation that suggest particularly close attention to their texts, an attention some find also in the Gospels.92 Even at the oral stage, traditions and varying versions of a single tradition can influence one another.93
In the most extreme form of conflation, ancient writers often tried to harmonize sources that they believed to be generally reliable.94 Sometimes they produced two similarly named figures to harmonize divergent traditions.95 Although harmonization is sometimes implausible,96 at other times it rightly values what survives of our sources above what we think we know based on our lack of surviving information.97 Thus, for example, scholars at one point noted two “contradictory” oral accounts of an 1881 lynching: in one, the men hang “from a railroad crossing,” in the other, they hang from a pine tree. Subsequently, however, historians found “old photographs that showed the bodies hanging at different times from both places”; after being lynched in one place, they were hanged again in another.98 Rather than assuming error at the outset, it seems best methodologically to begin by seeking to explain our sources as they are and attribute error to them only as a last resort after other plausible options have been exhausted.99
Biographers regularly simplified story lines by omitting irrelevant details, even when this practice required some adjustments to their narratives.100 Examples are available in Philo, Josephus,101 and Plutarch.102
Biographers often omit details to focus on their primary biographee at the time,103 sometimes even writing from that character’s vantage point.104 In Mark, we might think of the focus on Peter as a representative disciple, though often as a foil to Jesus (cf. Mark 8:29–33; 9:5; 10:28; 11:21; 14:29–31, 37, 54, 66–72; 16:7).105 To maintain focus on a main character or to simplify and streamline an account, biographers often “spotlighted” a particular character,106 sometimes even omitting other characters who were present. This technique is quite common in Plutarch.107 For example, he
Nor is this practice limited to Plutarch. Thus, for example, Josephus once mentions four bodyguards staying with him and waking him, whereas in another, perhaps more dramatized version, he has only one.111 Similarly, in his biography of Claudius, Suetonius focuses on Agrippina’s role in Claudius’s death, whereas his biography of Nero presents Nero as involved along with her.112 In the Gospels, we may think of Matthew streamlining his narrative by omitting messengers in Mark and probably Q (Matt 8:5; 9:18; Mark 5:35; Luke 7:3–5).113
As noted earlier, biographies were not committed to strict chronology, and biographers often lacked knowledge of any sequence for anecdotes about their characters.114 Even when unaware of an anecdote’s original setting, biographers still had to place it somewhere in their narratives,115 and they sought to do so in ways that provided the narrative cohesiveness that readers expected.116 Chronological displacement of scenes and sayings was thus fairly common,117 sometimes even when an author clearly knew that an event had taken place at a different time.118 Plutarch thus sometimes differs among his own biographies in narrative sequence.119
Numerical contradictions, even among a writer’s own works, are common.120 Some stem from erroneous memory, others from rounding or transcriptional errors,121 but some may reflect deliberate changes. (Historical reports also often exaggerated numbers,122 as their critics recognized.123 Even the most careful usually had only approximations, as they often recognized.)124
Compositional handbooks, as well as biographers’ practice, show that narrators could freely change an action’s subject from one person to more or from multiple persons to one.125 Thus, for example, Plutarch in one life depicts the reaction of Cato’s sisters, but in another, the same reaction of his (singular) sister.126 This practice may account for Mark omitting a second figure known to Matthew (Mark 5:2//Matt 8:28; Mark 10:46–52//Matt 9:27–31; 20:29–34), or, I think perhaps more likely, Matthew doubling a Markan figure to concisely compensate for omitting similarly delivered or healed figures elsewhere (Mark 1:23–26; 8:22–26).127
Transferring material about one person to another is more common in midrash than in biography, but it appears in the latter, whether deliberately or through confusion of memory.128 Especially after living memory, tradents sometimes transfer proverbs from one teacher to another or attribute them to multiple teachers.129 (On other occasions, however, the famous speaker himself may recycle sayings from others.)130 This particular problem is not likely in the Gospels, however. One would hardly expect the early Jesus movement to confuse others’ sayings with Jesus’s, since they deemed him their unique teacher and accorded him a unique authority.131 Our surviving evidence suggests that Jesus connected disciples to his own teaching the way rabbis at least formally connected students to the Torah.132
Omissions are common,133 although as mentioned in chapter 10, they are always within a narrator’s rights;134 they appear regularly when authors abridge their material (see discussion below). Thus, for example, the historian Polybius recommends omitting material already too well known or not helpful for the reader.135 Tacitus notes that he freely omitted material not of value to history’s primary, moral objective.136 Writers rarely include all possible information; ancient writers did not intend to do so.137 Various early Jewish, including Judean, works often omit troublesome episodes.138
Some writers cover traits or episodes that others avoided.139 Needing to be selective, biographers focused on points most relevant to their purpose,140 slowing down to treat in greater detail the most relevant material but accelerating at less relevant points.141 Still, as in redaction criticism of the Gospels, sometimes we can do no more than speculate concerning the reasons for omissions,142 except where fairly consistent patterns emerge.
Contrary to early form-critical studies of the Gospels, which supposed that the tradition’s tendency was always expansive, subsequent research demonstrated that it is impossible to predict whether the passage of time would lengthen or shorten an account.143 Ancient authors sometimes expanded and at other times abridged their sources.
Many changes that writers made in their sources were simply matters of arrangement, which was of great importance to those trained in rhetoric.144 Both poets and prose writers sometimes added clauses nonessential to the meaning or removed essential ones simply to make the arrangement sound better.145 A first-century rhetorical handbook shows that elaboration and abridgement were fairly elementary exercises.146 Ancient composers considered it a matter of arrangement, not of fabrication, to move sayings into different, preexisting narrative settings.147 One matter reminding the narrator of another, for example, was a common rhetorical technique for transition.148
Ancient writers freely expanded or abridged accounts without any thought that their contemporaries might find this practice objectionable. Plutarch often expands material by filling in detail.149 Biographers were more apt to create “fill” material when they lacked other sources, especially for ancient poets150 or for a hero’s childhood character.151 To expand their material, they sometimes work by inference from the material available; such speculation increases verisimilitude at the expense of being able to be certain about the original details.152
Expanding a historical or biographic work did not, however, always require extensive inferences and did not normally entail a deliberate change in meaning. The basic rhetorical exercises of one handbook (probably from the first century) include the practice of “expanding” and “condensing” stories such as fables.153 The writer also, however, deals with more realistic kinds of narrative, sometimes by simply adding details known from other sources or adding some description that is either implicit in the narrative or inherently probable in itself.154 (Some historians, however, did take such descriptive elaboration too far.)155
Rhetorical exercises could develop sample narratives by rewording without fabrication.156 Another writer describes amplification as adding more and more phrases to bring home the point increasingly forcefully.157 In rhetorical exercises one can elaborate a chreia by offering an encomium on a character; then paraphrasing; then explaining; and so forth.158
Diaspora Jewish writers handled their material similarly. Philo often expands narratives with explanatory and dramatic detail.159 Hellenizing Moses, Philo makes Moses a king and high priest; he emphasizes his “education and adolescence.”160 Josephus often follows accurately the sequence and substance of the biblical account, while expanding on some biblical narratives,161 even though the addition would appear conspicuous to many Jewish readers.
Few stylistic critics would have complained about abridgements. Greco-Roman writers and rhetoricians appreciated conciseness in a narrative, provided that it did not impair clarity or plausibility.162 Perhaps more important for many readers, longer works were not only more expansive but also more expensive. Plutarch sometimes abbreviates material;163 so do historians such as Thucydides164 and Diodorus Siculus.165 Jewish writers quoting earlier material also freely omitted and grammatically adjusted points;166 Philo167 and Josephus168 sometimes condense material, and all of 2 Maccabees is an abridgement of a larger work.169 Most Synoptic scholars likewise recognize that Matthew (and less frequently Luke) abridges Markan accounts.170
Judean haggadah permitted greater amplification than did Hellenistic historiography,171 but haggadah appears more comparable to Greek mythography than to Jewish biography.172 (A significant element of the perceived difference between historical and mythical accounts was often the difference between recent historical figures and remote characters of the mythical or legendary past.)173 The process was probably often incremental, preserving earlier legendary accretions and speculations.174
Although not writing biography, later rabbis illustrate the potential for long-term accretion of details through inference. They understood their amplification to have been implicit in the Sinai Torah from the very beginning.175 Some suggest that the rabbis themselves at least initially recognized that midrashic additions were homiletic, distinct from historical reconstructions.176 Jewish writers used amplification to answer questions posed by a narrative,177 to heighten the praise of God or the protagonist178 (sometimes by fanciful midrash),179 or to improve the story.180 Sometimes they added names,181 sometimes arrived at midrashically or for symbolic value.182 One could emphasize a theme already present in one’s source by reiterating it where it appeared and occasionally adding it elsewhere.183 Similarly, as noted in chapter 5, negative incidents could be toned down, omitted, or justified in the character’s favor. But while such traditional techniques may have influenced some sources used by Jewish historians, they did not characterize these writers’ own historiographic method per se.
Composition practices of ancient historical writers in general may help explain how some of the Evangelists worked. A biographer might compose a basic draft and subsequently arrange it more topically, adding relevant materials and otherwise revising it based on feedback from hearers.184 A writer could also recycle parts of his work (or someone else’s) when composing a new work.185
Given limited accessibility of sources, historians themselves often quoted excerpts or lines from memory, hence could recount the gist accurately while being confused at times on some details.186 This practice of quoting from memory may also explain some textual variation and assimilation in patristic sources187 as well as in NT quotations of the OT.188 As Jocelyn Penny Small notes in her work regarding ancient memory practices, we often “hold ancient writers to a standard far higher than we ourselves could achieve.” We generally do not recall what we wrote a few years ago; but whereas we can easily retrieve and check that work, such retrieval was typically far more difficult in antiquity.189
Source-dependent writers often followed their source material in blocks; apart from digressions, for example, Diodorus “followed a single source for chapters on end, transferring only when he came to the end of his subject-matter.”190 One observes the same pattern in Nepos’s biography of Themistocles.191 Because writing desks were not yet available,192 it was difficult for a writer to directly follow more than one work at a time, although they often supplemented or adapted based on the memory of (or notes on) the other sources they had read.193 On this model, Matthew and Luke inserted Q material, usually in blocks, into the narrative outline they had inherited from Mark.194
Still, it is also possible, as noted above, that some Jewish scribal sources may have worked with more than one source simultaneously, and this practice may have also affected the final composition of the Gospels.195 Like the Evangelists, such scribes had a limited “canon” of material from which they would be working.
11.7. The Degree of Adaptation in the Gospels
While biography was firmly rooted in historical information, it also potentially allowed significant flexibility in details. In general, human memory preserves primarily the gist, rather than all the details.196 Ancient biographers and historians, then, felt it within their rights to adapt details in the ways most fitting to their accounts and audience needs.
This observation should inform the genre expectations that we bring to the Gospels. Both the similarities among the Gospels and their differences match the sorts of similarities and differences found when we compare ancient biographers of then-recent figures. Given such adaptability, it is not surprising that, for example, the gist of Peter’s denial remains consistent among varying Gospel accounts, despite “variation in inessential detail.”197 Close readers in antiquity also recognized that the Gospels had differences on minor details.198 As one fairly conservative modern exegete has noted, “Each Synoptic evangelist sometimes altered a narrative by omission or addition in order to fit it to his own scheme.”199
Others likewise note that the sorts of variations in the Synoptics’ treatment of shared material is no greater than the sorts of variations that appear more generally in other ancient works using sources.200 In fact, John Kloppenborg rightly stresses that “Matthew and Luke used Q far more ‘woodenly’ than other writers employed their sources.”201 This is true even when another Jewish writer for a Diaspora audience is recounting divine speech from the LXX.202 Greater wooden borrowing does appear in the scribal practices evidenced in Qumran texts,203 but Matthew and Luke appear closer to Qumran texts “than they do to the practices of other historians or biographers, whose verbal indebtedness to their sources would rarely exceed 40% of their sources’ words in any instance, and for whom generous paraphrase was a more common likely practice.”204
If they believed that Peter’s authority stood behind Mark’s Gospel, Matthew and Luke possibly treated it as a semisacred text the way Qumran handled Scripture. Still, more study would be necessary to confirm such a suggestion; Matthew and Luke feel free to make adaptations. In any case, their adaptations are more conservative than those of many contemporaries; Josephus, writing for a Diaspora audience, does paraphrase Scripture more freely than we normally find at Qumran or in the Gospels.205
Licona’s conclusions from Plutarch agree: Plutarch employs nothing “close to the near ‘copy and paste’ method that is very often employed by Matthew and Luke.”206 Indeed, after a detailed examination of the sources, Licona concludes that, as in the case of Plutarch, the vast majority of differences in the Gospels’ parallel accounts are matters of secondary detail.207 They no more call into question the basic events in the Gospels than they do in Plutarch.208
As any careful student of the Gospels recognizes, the Gospels vary in some details even when telling the same stories. Ancient audiences, both Jewish and gentile, expected such variation in the biographic genre, and those who were experienced in and alert to biographic conventions would even know where most often to anticipate them. Such differences in ancient biographies include chronological displacement and conflation of material, simplying narratives by, for example, omitting inessential characters and filling in details by inference when necessary to make sense of the story or, in some writers, to recount it in a more appealing way.
Nevertheless, ancient audiences expected historical authors to convey the essential story and what they believed to be the spirit of the material. In general, we should expect such variation to affect only details, not the essential events portrayed. Both the Gospels and other early-empire biographies of recent public figures provide substantial information about their subjects, as well as revealing the authors’ agendas.
1. See, e.g., Mossman, “Plutarch and Biography”; for classical influence more generally on English literature, see esp. Copeland, History.
2. I believe that some of Licona’s more conservative critics have prematurely treated potentially complementary approaches as contradictory, and that some more skeptical critics fixate on his theological background (Baldwin, “Review,” provides context for why Licona articulates his arguments in the precise way that he does) more than on his arguments. Licona’s data and approaches come from classicists with no stake in the debates in NT scholarship. To a priori dismiss another scholar’s case based primarily on their background is to mount an ad hominem argument and—in principle, among the less courteous—to invite the same treatment in kind.
3. See also here Sanders, Paul, 98, recognizing that ancient historians distinguished truth from fiction but also composed in ways to make their stories flow well; cf. also Bauckham, Eyewitnesses, 595.
4. Bosworth, Arrian, 60.
5. See, e.g., Theon, Progymnasmata 1.93–171 (Butts); Hermogenes, Method in Forceful Speaking 24.440; Libanius, Anecdote 1.4; 2.3; Maxim 1.2–5; 2.3; 3.2; cf. Fronto, On Eloquence 3.5; Hock, “Paul and Education,” 202–3; Licona, Differences, 10–13; in Plutarch, see Licona, Differences, 34, 56, 100, 109; in Josephus, see Derrenbacker, Practices, 94–95, 116, following Downing (“Redaction Criticism 1,” 56, 62).
6. E.g., Licona, Differences, 32–33, 79–80. Likewise, the majority of variations in the Synoptic tradition are relatively minor (Allison, Constructing, 454).
7. Massey, “Disagreement,” 54–55.
8. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 18.252 (probably more accurate); Jewish War 2.183 (probably working from memory).
9. See, e.g., my comments in ch. 10 regarding Plutarch, Galba 26.5; Suetonius, Otho 4.1.
10. Aune, Environment, 82; Small, Wax Tablets, 195, 199.
11. E.g., Cicero, On the Orator 2.45.189; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Lysias 7.
12. See again the complaint in Plutarch, Alexander 70.3.
13. Dunn, Perspective, 112; Eddy and Boyd, Legend, 429–30.
14. For even Luke, see Keener, Acts, 1:136. Probable examples of added details do appear; for a minor one, cf. δεξιός (dexios) in Luke 6:6 versus simply χείρ (cheir) in Mark 3:1, 3, 5.
15. Plutarch, Alexander 70.3. His own romantic description of Darius’s death (Plutarch, Alexander 43.2) is missing in Arrian (Alexander 3.21–23), but it was evidently not his own invention (B. Perrin’s LCL note, 7:352n1, cites Quintus Curtius Rufus, History 5.13, 28; Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 17.73).
16. Shuler, Genre, 11–12; cf. Bowersock, Fiction, 1–27. See esp. Lucian, How to Write History 7–13; in his True Story 1.4, he complains that novelizers fail to recognize how obvious their “lies” were.
17. E.g., Herodian, History 1.1.1–2, despite his own rhetorical adjustments (cf. Whittaker, “Introduction,” xxxviii–xxxix)!
18. Papias’s term chreia here could refer to rhetorical adaptation (see ch. 5), though that is not its common meaning outside rhetorical contexts (cf. Did. 1.5; 11.5).
19. Papias, frag. 3.15 (Holmes). Many interpreters think that Papias prefers the Johannine chronological sequence to Mark’s here, but “order” (taxis) might refer instead to rhetorical arrangement, in which Mark’s plot was deemed deficient (see Moessner, “Voice”). Likewise, Papias (according to Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 2.15.2) reports that Peter’s listeners “begged Mark (whose gospel is extant), since he was Peter’s follower, to leave behind a written record of the teaching given to them verbally, and did not quit until they had persuaded the man” (Papias, frag. 21.1, Holmes). He seems to believe that Mark wrote before Peter’s death and that Peter subsequently approved the work (21.2); this scenario could fit one commonly proposed date, i.e., during the Neronian persecution. Irenaeus, writing ca. 180 CE, believes that Mark wrote after Peter’s death (Against Heresies 3.1.1), but Eusebius, though writing later, seems to depend here on Papias’s own text.
20. Pelling, Texts, 49; Pelling, “Method”; Licona, Differences, 67 (cf. 22).
21. Cf. perhaps Edwards, “Introduction,” xxii, contrasting Suetonius, Claudius 44 and Nero 33. Plutarch sometimes had to contend with differing source accounts (Almagor, “Narratives,” 70–71).
22. Pelling, Texts, 51.
23. McGing, “Adaptation,” 120; Hidalgo, “Study,” 287; Feldman, “Calf.”
24. McGing, “Adaptation,” 125, on Philo, Moses 1.85–147.
25. McGing, “Adaptation,” 123–25, noting Num 13–14 in Philo, Moses 1.220–38; Exod 17:1–7 in Moses 1.210–11; and Exod 3:7–4:17 in Moses 1.71–84.
26. McGing, “Adaptation,” 124–25 (to deemphasize Moses’s weakness), 128 (streamlining).
27. McGing, “Adaptation,” 125; for elaboration, see also, e.g., Begg, “Moves”; Begg, “Rephidim Episode.”
28. McGing, “Adaptation,” 127–30, 133, noting, e.g., Exod 2:15–22 in Moses 1.51–59 (cf. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 2.258–63).
29. McGing, “Adaptation,” 129–30.
30. McGing, “Adaptation,” 128, on his treatment of Exod 7:14–12:36 in Moses 1.96–139.
31. McGing, “Adaptation,” 125–26.
32. McGing, “Adaptation,” 128, noting esp. Moses 1.96–97.
33. See, e.g., Feldman, “Interpretation of Joshua”; Feldman, “General.”
34. McGing, “Adaptation,” 121–23, giving the example of Num 23:7–10 in Moses 1.278–79; see further Hidalgo, “Study.”
35. McGing, “Adaptation,” 126–27, noting transfer to the Egyptians generally in 1.105, 112.
36. Josephus, Against Apion 1.42; Jewish Antiquities 1.17; 14.1; 20.261, noted in Downing, “Redaction Criticism 1,” 47.
37. Downing, “Redaction Criticism 1,” 48.
38. See Downing, “Redaction Criticism 1”; “Redaction Criticism 2.”
39. Downing, “Redaction Criticism 1,” 56. This rearrangement can conflate related accounts.
40. Downing, “Redaction Criticism 1,” 50–51.
41. Downing, “Redaction Criticism 1,” 51–54, noting esp. explanatory and sometimes interpretive additions but also some heightened rhetorical pathos.
42. Downing, “Redaction Criticism 1,” 55.
43. Downing, “Redaction Criticism 1,” 49, following Pelletier, Josèphe, esp. 29, 222, on Josephus’s adaptations of the Letter of Ps.-Aristeas (cf. also Downing, “Redaction Criticism 2,” 33).
44. Downing, “Redaction Criticism 1,” 55–56, 60. The significant extrabiblical addition to the Moses story is pre-Josephan tradition attested in Artapanus (Downing, “Redaction Criticism 1,” 55, citing Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 9.27.432a).
45. Downing, “Redaction Criticism 1,” 64.
46. Downing, “Redaction Criticism 1,” 62.
47. Derrenbacker, Practices, 92–116, expanding beyond Downing, esp. on 110–16.
48. Henderson, “Life and War”; Henderson, “Comparison.”
49. See Henderson, “Comparison,” 270.
50. E.g., Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 3.16.42 (for Homer, Odyssey 11.600ff.); Diogenes Laertius, Lives 1.48 (for Homer, Iliad 2.557).
51. Licona, Differences, 31.
52. Licona, Differences, 32–33, 43, 79–80, 83.
53. Licona, Differences, 18, following Pelling, Plutarch and History, 156, 161; Edwards, Plutarch, 3; Jones, Plutarch and Rome, 85.
54. Downing, “Conventions”; Derrenbacker, Practices, 97.
55. Licona, Differences, 109.
56. Power, “Poetry,” 238, following Pelling, Plutarch and History, 152–56; Duff, “Childhood,” 92–93; Duff, “How Lives Begin,” 201–2; Stadter, “Anecdotes,” 293; Moles, “Letters,” 144–45, 161; cf. Licona, Differences, 17.
57. Plutarch, Solon 27.1 (trans. B. Perrin, LCL).
58. Macrobius, Saturnalia 2.4.11 (cf., e.g., in Van der Horst, “Macrobius,” 222; Reinhold, Diaspora, 100), probably reflects tradition springing from the Gospel itself (Smallwood, Jews, 104n156), although it may follow a standard style of rhetorical insult (Diogenes Laertius, Lives 6.2.41).
59. Licona, Differences, 2.
60. Licona, Differences, 10–11, on Theon.
61. Licona, Differences, 12–13, noting Theon, Progymnasmata 87–90 (36–38).
62. The emphatic pronoun in Matt 8:7 may suggest a question (with, e.g., Jeremias, Promise, 30; Martin, “Pericope,” 15; France, “Exegesis,” 257; Carson, “Matthew,” 201; Talbert, Matthew, 113; Evans, Matthew, 187).
63. Licona, Differences, 19.
64. Licona, Differences, 20. For the relevance of Pelling’s “compositional devices” for the Gospels, cf. also Bauckham, Eyewitnesses, 595–96.
65. Licona, Differences, 20, cites here Cato the Younger 25.5. Cf. ch. 5.
66. This is an optimal example of the “law of biographical relevance” treated in Licona, Differences, 21.
67. Licona, Differences, 23–111; cf. Licona, “Viewing.”
68. See Kwon, “Reimagining,” 144–219, 297–303, esp. 211–19, 299; these include (212–13) paraphrase (28 times), compression (13–17 times), simplification (13 times), spotlighting (8 times), expansion of narrative details (8 times), transferal (8 times), conflation (6 times), and displacement (3 times). The techniques focus on the protagonist the strong majority of the time (299).
69. See Kwon, “Reimagining,” 220–88; for charts of the devices, see esp. 255, 286–87; for totals and their functions, 299, 303; see earlier Keener, “Otho”; Goh, “Galba.”
70. See Duff, Lives, e.g., 243, 268.
71. Cf. Ytterbrink, Gospel, 84, noting esp. Xenophon, Agesilaus 8.6.
72. Duff, Lives, 257; for contradictions, see also 278.
73. Luke, “Ideology.”
74. Edwards, “Introduction,” xix. Cf. the function of David in, e.g., 1 Kgs 3:14; 11:33, 38; 15:3, 11; 2 Kgs 14:3; 2 Chr 21:12; 34:2; or, negatively, Jeroboam I, in 1 Kgs 15:34; 16:2, 19, 26; 22:52; 2 Kgs 13:6, 11; 17:22.
75. See, e.g., Theon, Progymnasmata 1.93–171 (Butts); Hermogenes, Method in Forceful Speaking 24.440; Libanius, Anecdote 1.4; 2.3; Maxim 1.2–5; 2.3; 3.2; cf. Fronto, Eloquence 3.5; Hock, “Paul and Education,” 202–3.
76. E.g., Licona, Differences, 10–13; in Nepos, see Christian, “Themistocles,” 139; in Plutarch, see Pelling, “Adaptation,” 127; Licona, Differences, 34, 56, 100, 109; Kwon, “Charting,” 71–72; in Philo, Hidalgo, “Study,” 290, 300; in Josephus, Derrenbacker, Practices, 94–95, 116, following Downing, “Redaction Criticism 1,” 56, 62.
77. Downing, “Redaction Criticism 2,” 33; Aune, Environment, 125; Downing, “Redaction Criticism 2,” 33; Kirk, “Ehrman, Bauckham, and Bird,” 105–6, and other works cited there. For ancient views of plagiarism, see Seneca the Elder, Controversiae 1.pref.19; Suasoriae 2.19; 3.7; McGill, “Seneca on Plagiarizing,” 337–46; Knoppers, “Problem,” 27–30. The Evangelists either shared popular lack of concern for some elite standards (cf. the complaint in Pliny, Natural History pref.17) or viewed the sacred tradition as community property.
78. Phaedrus, Fables 2, prol. 8.
79. See, e.g., Quintilian, Orator’s Education 4.2.113.
80. Pelling, “Adaptation,” 127–28; Licona, Differences, 20, 36, 39, 72, 98; Kwon, “Charting,” 73. Thus, e.g., Nepos condenses material from his sources (Christian, “Themistocles,” 139). See also Satterthwaite, “Acts,” 345, citing esp. Lucian, How to Write History 56–57; cf. also 27–28; Cicero, On the Orator 3.27.104–5; 53.202–3; Quintilian, Orator’s Education 8.4; Longinus, On the Sublime 11–12. The concise summary in Libanius, Narration 27, conspicuously connects events that in mythical legend spanned over a decade. Laistner, Historians, 58–59, notes that Sallust telescoped events in his historical monographs, where space was at a premium; cf. also, e.g., Matt 8:5–6 with Luke 7:3–5; Matt 9:18 with Mark 5:23, 35; on possible telescoping due to compression in Acts 7:15–16, see, e.g., Bruce, Acts: Greek, 165–66; Johnson, Acts, 119; cf. Keener, Acts, 2:1371–72; in Luke 24:1, 13, 28, 36, 50, see Keener, Acts, 1:648–49; on Acts 26:16, Keener, Acts, 4:3518.
81. Licona, Differences, 52, 108.
82. Small, Wax Tablets, 194, suggesting a memory lapse, though here deliberate abridgement is likelier.
83. Compare, e.g., Justin, Epitome 6.8.1 with 6.8.13; or Luke 24:36–51 with Acts 1:3; cf. also Acts 12:23 with Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 19.350.
84. For Greek and Roman writers, see, e.g., Stanley, Language, 290–91; Hill, “Words,” 271; Pelling, Texts, 45; for many Jewish writers, see Stanley, Language, 322–23.
85. Burridge, Gospels, 169; Derrenbacker, Practices, 94–95, 110–13, 115–16.
86. See Small, Wax Tablets, 193.
87. See Pelling, Texts, 45; Licona, Differences, 20, 48, 52, 56, 67, 91, 95, 108.
88. Downing, “Redaction Criticism 1,” 56.
89. Downing, “Redaction Criticism 1,” 61–62; cf. 57–58.
90. Barker, “Reassessment,” 113–15 (cf. still earlier in 112n11).
91. Barker, “Reassessment,” 115–17.
92. Barker, “Reassessment,” 114, 117–19, rightly noting also Kloppenborg, “Variation,” 74.
93. Vansina, Oral Tradition, 153; cf. Small, Wax Tablets, 200.
94. E.g., Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 4.4.1–5; see also Josephus (Derrenbacker, Practices, 93, 95); the Diatessaron (Barker, “Reassessment,” 116). Cf. also scribes with textual variants (Barker, “Reassessment,” 112; cf. 115). Sometimes they probably have smoothed out contradictions in their sources in their own rewriting; Damon, “Source,” suggests this approach with respect to Livy, History 34.54.4–8, and Tacitus, Annals bks. 1, 14.
95. As in Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 4.4.1–5; Arrian, Alexander 2.16.1–3; 4.28.2; Indica 5.13.
96. E.g., to harmonize accounts Origen suggested “three separate occasions of the anointing of Jesus by a woman at dinner” (Origen, Commentary on Matthew 77; noted in Wiles, Gospel, 16).
97. Licona, Differences, 91, notes that some differences among ancient historians can be explained more plausibly than others.
98. Eddy and Boyd, Legend, 424 (citing Bogart and Montell, Memory, 77, a work on method in oral historiography).
99. See Brown, Death, 8; so also historian of antiquity Alanna Nobbs, personal correspondence, August 20, 2018. Cf. Dillon and Finamore, “Introduction,” 4; after offering various solutions to a problem on which they comment, they write, “Another possibility, of course, is that Eunapius is profoundly confused, but that conclusion seems to be a counsel of despair.” Writers can make mistakes, but plugging all holes with this explanation resembles appeal to God-of-the-gaps in scientific inquiry; it short-circuits a prior search for other plausible explanations. In everyday life we typically harmonize limited yet trusted resources.
100. See Licona, Differences, 20.
101. McGing, “Adaptation,” 131–33, noting esp. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 2.176; 11.68; Downing, “Redaction Criticism 1,” 57.
102. See De Pourcq and Roskam, “Virtues,” 176; Licona, Differences, 47–48, 77, 83, 109.
103. In Plutarch, see Licona, Differences, 42, 46, 48, 50–52, 56, 72, 75, 77, 80, 83, 95, 97, 100, 108.
104. In Plutarch, see Licona, Differences, 21, 39.
105. On others as foils to Jesus, see, e.g., Wrede, Messianic Secret, 106; Tolbert, Sowing, 222; Malbon, Company, 91–93; Horsley, Hearing, 91; Bond, “Paragon,” 29; though not qualifications in Henderson, Christology, 13–14, 194.
106. Cf. focalization in De Pourcq and Roskam, “Virtues,” 168.
107. See, e.g., Licona, Differences, 20, 36, 39, 48, 61, 67, 69, 75, 103, 108–10.
108. Licona, Differences, 97, on Plutarch, Brutus 17.4.
109. Licona, Differences, 95.
110. Hägg, Biography, 261.
111. Josephus, Jewish War 2.600–601; Life 137 (Henderson, “Comparison,” 270). The more dramatic version also urges suicide rather than flight.
112. Edwards, “Introduction,” xxii, noting Suetonius, Claudius 44; Nero 33.
113. Cf. observations in, e.g., Ehrman, Interrupted, 41 (though perhaps anachronistically treating them as contradictions, since this was not how most ancient authors treated such differences except when writing polemic); taking into account ancient writing patterns, Keener, Matthew, 264n14, 302 (already in the 1999 edition). However they explain it, all careful readers will notice the differences, which the Evangelists themselves did not seek to conceal.
114. For possible examples of rearranging “free-floating” material, see Licona, Differences, 28, 32–33, 47–48, 89, 91.
115. See Licona, Differences, 89, 91.
116. See Licona, Differences, 89–90, on Quintilian, Orator’s Education 9.5.129; Lucian, How to Write History 55 (cf. 50); see more extensively Longenecker, Rhetoric, 4–5, 10–18, 21–23, 34–37, 41, 46, 62–66 (on “chain-link interlock”); also Brack, Historiography, 8–14.
117. E.g., Pelling, “Adaptation,” 128–29; McGing, “Adaptation,” 125–26; Kwon, “Charting,” 74; Henderson, “Comparison,” 269, 272; Licona, Differences, 67, 72, 108; Licona, “Reliable,” on Sallust; it leads to conflation in 91, 108. In 2 Macc, see Reynolds, “Difference,” 309.
118. Licona, Differences, 20 (citing the explicit Plutarch, Cato the Younger 25.5).
119. Licona, Differences, 47, 50–51, 110; Licona, “Viewing,” 326.
120. Clear Josephan examples in Henderson, “Comparison,” 269 (following Cohen, Josephus, 7); Plutarchean examples in Licona, Differences, 57, 73, 104, 110. Cf. spelling or name differences in Henderson, “Comparison,” 268, 271–72; Licona, Differences, 75, 109–10. Matthew and Luke tend to follow Mark more closely (e.g., Mark 6:44; Matt 14:21; Luke 9:14; cf. John 6:10).
121. For the latter, cf. blame on the scribe in Polybius, Histories 12.4.4–6; discussion of Josephus, Jewish War 2.261–63; Jewish Antiquities 20.169–72 in Lake and Cadbury, Commentary, 277; Conzelmann, Acts, 184; H. Aldrich in Lardner, Works, 1:436. Cf. also Livy, History 3.3.9, in B. O. Foster, LCL 2:251n1.
122. See Xenophon, Hiero 2.16; Livy, History 3.8.10; Tacitus, Histories 3.61. Josephus inflates numbers even in the biblical text (cf. Jewish Antiquities 6.203 with 1 Sam 18:27 MT; contrast the LXX).
123. Thucydides, History 5.68.2; Polybius, Histories 3.33.17–18; 12.17.1–12.22.7; Pliny, Letters 9.16.1; Lucian, How to Write History 20. Sometimes, however, great numbers appear in careful sources (e.g., Polybius, Histories 1.63.6; 3.117.4).
124. Rubincam, “Numbers”; cf. the warning in Quintus Curtius Rufus, History 4.16.26. The exception would be census records, as in, e.g., Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 5.20.1; 5.75.3; 6.96.4; 9.15.2; 9.36.3. Even here, reports are not always reliable (cf. Suetonius, Julius 41, with Plutarch, Caesar 55.3; note also Josephus, Jewish War 6.423–25; t. Pesaḥ. 4:15; cf. Byatt, “Numbers”).
125. Licona, Differences, 11.
126. Licona, Differences, 43, comparing Plutarch, Cato the Younger 30.3–4 and Pompey 44.3. See also 109, comparing Pompey 67.3–4 and Caesar 41.1–2.
127. Cf. Goulder, Midrash, 44–45; Gundry, Matthew, 158; Holtzmann as cited in Bruce, “Matthew,” 145. For Matthean style here, cf. Meier, Matthew, 230; possibly Mark 11:2//Matt 21:2; Mark 14:57//Matt 26:60.
128. For Philo’s Moses, see McGing, “Adaptation,” 126–27 (possibly and rarely); for Plutarch, see Licona, Differences, 20, 34, 50, 61, 67, 72, 98, 108; Licona, “Viewing,” 325.
129. See here, e.g., Diogenes Laertius, Lives 2.60; Ariston 1 in Plutarch, Sayings of Spartans, Moralia 218A; Themistocles 2 in Plutarch, Sayings of Kings and Commanders, Moralia 185A, and Alexander in Dio Chrysostom, Orations 2; Alcibiades 1 in Plutarch, Sayings of Kings and Commanders, Moralia 186D, and a Spartan in Moralia 234E; Plutarch, Marcus Cato 2.4; the story in Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists 1.485; Athenaeus, The Learned Banqueters 550; and Diogenes Laertius, Lives 4.37 (W. C. Wright in Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists, LCL 14–15n2); note also Musonius Rufus, frag. 51, p. 144.3–7, 10–19; Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists 1.485 (with note in LCL 14–15n2); discussion in Alexander, “IPSE DIXIT,” 121, with some specific limitations. For conflation of early namesakes in oral tradition, see Barber and Barber, Severed, 115.
130. Thus many of M. Cato’s maxims were translated from Greek (Plutarch, Marcus Cato 2.4). A saying attributed to both Musonius and Cato (Musonius Rufus, frag. 51, p. 144.3–19) could be misattributed, or it could have been recycled (perhaps more than once).
131. See fully Byrskog, Teacher, 237–308, 350–68, and esp. 307–10; see also Yieh, One Teacher; Licona, Differences, 183; cf. Riesner, Lehrer, 259–64. One expects such confusion to be fairly rare in any case this early in the tradition process (see Keener, Historical Jesus, 142–44).
132. See Riesner, Lehrer, 417. Cf. Matt 7:24–27 with ʾAbot R. Nat. 24A; see Jeremias, Parables, 194; Keener, Matthew, 254–56.
133. E.g., where we can test Nepos or Philo against their sources (Christian, “Themistocles,” 139; Hidalgo, “Study,” 287, 289).
134. Cf. here Pelling, Texts, 119.
135. Polybius, Histories 15.36.10; cf. Tacitus, Annals 15.63.
136. Tacitus, Annals 3.65.
137. Still, criticism of Suetonius focused on what he omitted more than on errors of fact (Hägg, Biography, 230).
138. E.g., Jub. 13:17–18; 29:13; T. Zeb. 1:5–7; earlier, see, e.g., Williamson, Chronicles, 236.
139. For example, among biographers, both Plutarch (Agesilaus 2.1; 14.1) and Nepos (On Great Generals 17 [Agesilaus], 8.1) mention Agesilaus’s lameness; his friend Xenophon does not. Nepos and Plutarch likewise cover Agesilaus’s death, but Xenophon does not (Ytterbrink, Gospel, 94). Elsewhere in biography, see McGing, “Adaptation,” 120, 131–33; Licona, Differences, 2, 20, 51, 56, 72, 75, 77, 95, 109; see further ch. 10.
140. De Pourcq and Roskam, “Virtues,” 166–67 (noting esp. Plutarch, Aemilius Paulus 1.2), 176; McGing, “Adaptation,” 131–33; cf. Votaw, “Biographies,” 231. For histories, cf. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Thuc. 13–17; Laistner, Historians, 132.
141. De Pourcq and Roskam, “Virtues,” 167.
142. Pelling, Texts, 101.
143. See evidence in Sanders, Tendencies, esp. 19, 46–87, 88–189, 272; cf. Stein, “Criteria,” 238–40.
144. Cf., e.g., Dionysius of Halicarnassus, On Literary Composition 2–4. For the importance of arrangement in rhetoric, see, e.g., Rhetorica ad Herennium 1.1.1–3; Cicero, On the Composition of Arguments 1.6.8; Menander Rhetor, Epideictic Treatises 2.4, 392.14; Aune, Dictionary, 62–64; Wuellner, “Arrangement,” 51–87. For one clear example of rearrangement in the Gospels, cf. Matt 21:12–13, 19–22; Mark 11:13–25. For stylistic as well as halakic and ideological editing in the compilation of the Mishnah, see Kulp, “Patterns.”
145. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, On Literary Composition 9.
146. See Licona, Differences, 13–14, on Theon.
147. Theon, Progymnasmata 4.73–79, on adding narrative to a fable or the reverse (although the narrative is added as a parallel, not as a setting, for the fable). Maxims could be added to narratives (5.388–425) or preexisting narratives combined to relate two or more of them at once (5.427–41).
148. Quintilian, Orator’s Education 9.2.60–61. Cf. the discussion of catchwords in Gerhardsson, Memory, 145–49, 153; in the Gospels, cf. Bultmann, Tradition, 325–26.
149. Pelling, “Adaptation,” 129–31; Russell, “Coriolanus,” 21–28; Small, Wax Tablets, 199 (following Pelling, “Adaptation”); Kwon, “Charting,” 73–74; Licona, Differences, 20.
150. Power, “Poetry,” 237. Some would compare the speeches early in Acts (e.g., Johnson, Acts, 10).
151. Beck, “Demonax,” 85, regarding Plutarch (following Pelling, Plutarch and History, 308–9) but not Lucian.
152. See, e.g., Christian, “Themistocles,” 114, 118, 130, 139; Hidalgo, “Study,” 287, 291, 300.
153. Theon, Progymnasmata 4.37–42 (Butts). Expansion involved matters such as lengthening speeches or describing terrain (4.80–82). Even oracles, which were considered divine utterances, could be expanded; see Aune, Prophecy, 58.
154. Theon, Progymnasmata 3.224–40. In 2.115–23 Theon compares elaborations in earlier historical sources. Elaboration (ἐργασίας, ergasias) was especially useful for rebuttal (1.172–75).
155. See the complaint of Lucian, How to Write History 19, 57.
156. The typical examples in Hermogenes, Invention 2.7.120–21; for development more fully, see 2.1.108–9; 2.7.120–24. Hypothetical declamations could invent new situations in history (e.g., Hermogenes, Invention 2.4.115), but the Gospels and their sources do not involve hypothetical rhetorical exercises.
157. Longinus, On the Sublime 11.1; cf. Menander Rhetor, Epideictic Treatises 2.3, 379.2–4. For a more detailed discussion of amplification, see Anderson, Glossary, 26–29 (with full reference to the sources).
158. Hermogenes, Progymnasmata 3. On Chreia, 7; Aphthonius, Progymnasmata 3. On Chreia, 23S, 4R; 4. On Maxim, 9–10.
159. McGing, “Adaptation,” 127–30, 133, noting, e.g., Exod 2:15–22 in Philo, Moses 1.51–59 (cf. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 2.258–63).
160. McGing, “Adaptation,” 134, citing Philo, Moses 1.20–33, 148–62.
161. E.g., Begg, “Blanks,” on Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 9.29–43, and 2 Kgs 3:4–27.
162. Theon, Progymnasmata 5.39–43, 52–53; Lucian, How to Write History 56; Phaedrus, Fables 2, prol. 12–13; 3, epil. 8–9; 4, epil. 7–9; Philostratus, Heroicus 29.6; in speeches, e.g., Diogenes Laertius, Lives 7.1.20; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Thucydides 55; Demosthenes 18, 20, 24; Lysias 5; Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists 2.4.569. One could, however, be too brief at times (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 2 Letter to Ammaeus 2; Lucian, How to Write History 30).
163. Licona, Differences, 98, 100, 108.
164. Pelling, Texts, 119.
165. Derrenbacker, Practices, 91–92; for historical writers generally, 76.
166. Stanley, Language, 323. For abridged documents, cf. also Small, Wax Tablets, 177.
167. McGing, “Adaptation,” 123–25; Hidalgo, “Study,” 292–93.
168. Derrenbacker, Practices, 115.
169. 2 Macc 2:23, 26, 28, apparently following standard abridgement practices.
170. I believe that Mark may have also abridged for his preface material that he knew from Q (Keener, Spirit, 60–61, 94–95).
171. Cf. Penner, Praise, 247–60. Such haggadic adaptation appears in both midrash and folk literature (Wright, “Midrash,” 129); rabbis also sometimes created stories using earlier rabbis for tongue-in-cheek homiletic purposes.
172. Cf. Greek elaboration of sacred stories in Maclean and Aitken, Heroikos, li–lii.
173. See discussion in ch. 9.
174. Some argue that even scribes adapted texts they copied, considering the needs of their audience with an oral mentality (Person, “Scribe,” noting 1QIsa209).
175. Sifre Deut. 313.2.4; cf. Urbach, Sages, 1:305, 376.
176. Milikowsky, “Midrash.”
177. E.g., Demetrius the Chronographer (third century BCE), frag. 5 (Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 9.29.16); Jub. 4:1, 9; 12:14; 13:11; 27:1, 4–5 (Esau and Jacob vs. Isaac and Jacob); y. Ketub. 12:4, §8 (fanciful midrash).
178. 2 Macc 2:1–8 (expanding Jeremiah’s mission); Jub. 29:14–20 (rhetorically contrasts Jacob’s respect for his parents with Esau’s disrespect); T. Job 9–15 (see OTP 1:832); T. Jos. 3:1; cf. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 6.203; LAB 31 (Burnette-Bletsch, “Jael”).
179. Pesiq. Rab Kah. 4:3 (“the rabbis” on Solomon); Gen. Rab. 43:3; Exod. Rab. 10:4; Pesiq. Rab. 49:5; cf. Artapanus in Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 9.27.7 (cf. 1 Sam 18:17, 21–25).
180. Jub. 11:14–15, 13:18, 22; possibly 4Q160, frags. 3–5, 7; Tg. Ps.-Jon. on Gen. 50:26; Ps.-Jon. on Exod. 13:19.
181. Jub. 11:14–15; Liv. Pro. 19 (Joad) (§30 in Schermann’s Greek text); Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 8.231; LAB 40:1 (in LAB in general, cf. Bauckham, “Liber antiquitatum,” 67; in Jewish sources more generally, Pilch, “Naming”); cf. Plutarch, Alexander 20.4–5 (questioning Chares’s report).
182. See Rook, “Names,” on patriarchal wives in Jubilees. (Names are sometimes, however, the elements of tradition most resistant to change; cf., e.g., the observation of Bernal, Athena, 2:337.)
183. As LAB does in its polemic against idolatry (Murphy, “Idolatry”).
184. Burridge, Comparison, 203; Aune, Environment, 82; see, e.g., Josephus, Against Apion 1.49–50; cf. Lucian, How to Write History 48; fuller detail in Small, Wax Tablets, 26–40; Derrenbacker, Practices, 39–44; Keener, Acts, 43–50. Proto-Gospels (cf. Streeter, Gospels, 199–222) may have thus existed—at least temporarily. Cf. perhaps Papias’s Matthew as a proto-Matthew Q (cf. Filson, History, 83; Hill, Matthew, 23–27, 53) or a proto-Q (Knight, “Problem”).
185. E.g., Josephus seems to have employed his Jewish War as his main source for the comparable portion of the Jewish Antiquities (Krieger, “Hauptquelle”).
186. Marincola, “Introduction,” 2; cf. Small, Wax Tablets, 193.
187. Cf. Riesner, Lehrer, 452; Hill, “Words.”
188. Cf., e.g., Montanaro, “Use.” In various ancient sources, cf. Stanley, Language, 304, 322, 334; for deliberate adaptation, see 290–91.
189. Small, Wax Tablets, 194; cf. 188–90.
190. Bosworth, Arrian, 9–10 (quotation from 9).
191. See Christian, “Themistocles,” 139. Cf. Tatian in Mattila, “Question.”
192. Small, Wax Tablets, 151, 155, 163–68, 176; Derrenbacker, Practices, 38.
193. Pelling, “Method,” 91–92; Small, Wax Tablets, 151–55, 163–70, 176–81, 185–87 (citing also Luce, Livy, 144); Derrenbacker, Practices, 38–39. This factor remains likely, despite the usual practice of dictation (for which, see, e.g., Cicero, Letters to Atticus 14.21; Dio Chrysostom, Orations 18.18; Galen, Grief 83).
194. Aune, Environment, 65, 139; Burridge, Comparison, 204–5; esp. Downing, “Compositional Conventions”; Downing, “Actuality”; Small, Wax Tablets, 179–81; Derrenbacker, Practices, 38–39, 47–49. For Matthew’s redaction of Q and dependence on memory at points, see now esp. Kirk, Q in Matthew (though cf. also considerations in Tuckett, “Matthew and Problem”); for limits in reconstructing Q, see esp. Weaks, “Problematizing.”
195. See Barker, “Reassessment,” 113–19.
196. See, e.g., Bauckham, Eyewitnesses, 333–34; see discussion in ch. 14.
197. Bauckham, Eyewitnesses, 344–45.
198. Licona, Differences, 1, cites here John Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew 1.6.
199. Ellis, “Making,” 331.
200. Kloppenborg, “Variation,” 63–74.
201. Kloppenborg, “Variation,” 63.
202. Kloppenborg, “Variation,” 67–70, noting Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 3.91; 6.368–73.
203. Kloppenborg, “Variation,” 74–77; Barker, “Reassessment,” 113–14.
204. Kloppenborg, “Variation,” 77. He compares the degree of verbal agreement with the activities of scribes (78–79).
205. For possible memorization variants in the Qumran sources, cf. Carr, Writing, 230; for one early evaluation of discussion on Qumran’s possible scriptorium, see Culpepper, School, 156–68.
206. Licona, Differences, 20–21.
207. Licona, Differences, 200.
208. Licona, Differences, 201.